In the competitive world of food delivery, maintaining strong order performance is key to success. High cancellation rates can decrease your virtual brand’s potential revenue and your rating on delivery apps. Recently, platforms like Uber Eats have implemented new policies for virtual brands, requiring their canceled order rates to be below 5%.
If you’re concerned about your virtual brand’s cancellation rates, reputation, and reviews, we’ve got good news! There are several quick fixes to enhance your fulfilled orders, and we’ll guide you through them in this blog post.
1. Define Accurate Operational Hours for your Virtual Brand
Start with one of the simplest – yet most effective – measures: ensuring your operational hours are accurate. If your hours haven’t been configured properly, update them! This will help prevent confusion for your customers and strengthen your brand’s professionalism.
Today’s best order management solutions let you change your operating times immediately, ensuring that your kitchen is always on-schedule. We also recommend setting (and promoting) special hours for holidays – this will keep your main working hours consistent with customers. Be proactive in defining your working schedule, and you’ll set consistent expectations for eaters.
2. Manage your Virtual Brand’s Unavailable Ingredients
It’s a common scenario: unavailable ingredients often lead to canceled orders. If you run out of a menu item, mark it as unavailable (or, in restaurant terms, “86” it). Most modern order software lets you keep these updated item availability statuses until the end of the day or indefinitely. Just remember to reactivate these items once they’re back in stock – otherwise, customers won’t be able to order them again!
3. Optimize Delivery Hand-offs
If your interaction with delivery drivers seems less-than-seamless, it’s time to ensure your business information is up-to-date. Changes happen – as a restaurant owner, you might need to clarify driver instructions, or adjust your business’s address or phone number. Make sure all your virtual brand’s public-facing information is correct, and canceled orders will be less likely.
Future Foods Strategies for Reducing Canceled Virtual Brand Orders
Brands that partner with Future Foods enjoy several additional ways to maximize their fulfilled orders. With the Otter delivery management platform, you can verify your restaurant’s operating hours in your Otter Dashboard. You can also use the Otter Dashboard to set your brand’s holiday hours throughout the entire year in seconds! This gives eaters a strong understanding of when you’re open, keeping cancellations low and ratings high.
Future Foods users can also manage items across all of their delivery menus from a single Otter tablet. Through Menu Management, restaurant staff can add, 86, or edit items rapidly, and push these updates across their entire business! This keeps kitchens organized and running efficiently, strengthening order accuracy and minimizing delivery issues. Achieving the lowest order cancellations and the highest delivery profit is only possible with the right restaurant tech.
Make all of your virtual brand’s orders a success!
With the strategies laid out here, it’s easy to eliminate order cancellations and maintain an impactful restaurant reputation. As with many elements of operating a virtual brand, proactivity and an eagerness to adapt is critical for success. Use these methods to keep your eaters informed, engaged, and aware of when you’re ready to serve them. If you do, you won’t just be reducing canceled orders – you’ll be empowering every part of your digital restaurant business.
